Mike+,

I spent my entire Bible Study on this yesterday, but from a different angle.
I first instructed them about worldviews, or metanrratives, and how they
dominate our perception of reality.  I the explained to them that we are now
moving from an Enlightenment worldview to a postmodern one, and how, in
postmodernity, the story or the narrative is everything.  In a sense this is
less a development than a restoration.

When you look at Acts, you don't find Peter, Stephen, and Paul teaching
doctrine.  Almost always they tell a story, and almost always, that story is
the epic of Israel culminating in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

This is very different then how we have proceeded with teaching the faith
for the past 300 years (and more especially the past 100).  During this
time, doctrine was the thing taught.  Catechisms focused on explain the 10
commandments, the golden rule, the Lord's Prayer, and definitions for the
Church, sacraments, etc.  What hasn't been taight is the story itself.  Few
Anglicans know many of the biblical stories at all, never mind, knowing them
well enough to be informed by them.

In the 20th century, we moved away from the Biblical narrative for many
different reasons.  But among those reasons, the one I hear so often is that
the Old Testament stories are no good, because when the children grow up,
they will see that their all historically ludicrous and stop believing them.
A thoroughly modern way of looking at things (ie science is the sole
conveyer of truth).

In the postmodern world, the Church is going to have to get back to the
story.  Doctrine remains important, not because it gives us a bunch a rules
about God and ourselves, but BECAUSE it tells us how to read and live out
that story correctly.  And by reading and living out the Biblical
metanarrative (to which I would add the history of the Church) that people's
lives will be shaped and their faith nurtured.

Most of our people are older and thus immersed in modernity.  I have found
that the only way to get them to begin to appreciate Scripture is by
challenging their modernist assumptions.  This usually ends with some of
them in tears (their world has been rocked), but the sort of tears that
breeds enough humility to move forward.

Mark+